Turn Your Favorite Song Into Art

It’s a great time to be a music poster enthusiast. Band posters are becoming wittier, more beautiful and now, more abstract with (Dis)play That Song. Design genius Henrik Hohenstein created the online application, which analyzes a song’s lyrics, genre and length to create a custom poster out of corresponding graphics. The images end up looking somewhat like colorful crop circles from the sky.

We tested out a few songs to see how they’d come across as visuals. Surprisingly, a depressing Smiths song could double as cheerful mid-century modern wallpaper. The poster’s graphics correspond to length (4-5 minutes), genre (indie/alternative in a lovely magenta), and themes covered (dream, friend/family, people, life, and accident). Nirvana’s most famous song is equally jaunty as a poster, whose pattern would make an adorable sundress.

“Aeroplane Over the Sea” looks about right: a slate grey background with a vertical pattern that symbolizes themes of time, weather, magic, nature, love, and dream. Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” appears as bold and turbulent as the song itself, with a striking pattern in vivid blue.

See what your favorite song looks like here, and imagine what kind of dilettante’s palace your dorm room could have been with abstract song art instead of frayed band posters.

Click through the gallery above to see (Dis)play That Song’s take on some classics. Let us know in the comments section if you think these posters do them justice!